Today, I was at comic con, and this amazing artist hand drawn this for me, and of course, I want has the original 1984 punk T800 from The Terminator!

There are no time travel paradoxes in the films, because every time a terminator or a person is sent back in time a new branching timeline is created. Which is to say, a new parallel dimension.

In T1, the Skynet that nearly destroyed humanity, but found itself on the brink of defeat sent a T-800 back to kill Sara Connor. That created a new timeline, a new parallel reality. Skynet was the result of a timeline in which no Terminator had ever threatened Sara Connor. Timeline T1 becomes T1a.

Now, things get weird from here. Technically the humans who sent Kyle Reese back cannot have come from the same timeline in which SkyNet sent the T-800 back, because, again, the past of that original timeline did not have a Terminator attack on Sara. They started in T1a, and now created T1b sending Kyle back.

Sending the T1000 back in the start of Terminator 2 moved them from T1b to T2. Then the humans send their friendly T800 back, creating T2a.

So on and so on.

They don’t create time paradoxes or loops, they branch reality into new timelines.

I mean add a few stock “tips”, send him back, make a ton of money to start “Skynet” and then start buying the best PCs and factory/robotics of the era. He can do upgrades to the hardware and software overtime and Skynet can be up and running decades before it was originally. Heck, he could “create” the internet, processors, and more, it can all have hidden partitions/code waiting for the right moment but just make us dependent on computers and everything revolves around…. oh shit!

okay hear me out but the writers of Terminator Genisys were clearly massive George RR Martin fans and set the whole thing in the Westeros/Valyria timeline and the Targaryens are just terminators which is why the dragons look so CGI (also Matt Smith is Skynet AND Daemon Targaryen which makes the whole bloodline thing even worse)

so i was rewatching genisys the other day and it hit me out of nowhere. the timeline stuff in that movie is already so convoluted that at some point skynet or whatever is basically just hopping between realities trying to kill john connor. and one of those realities is clearly westeros.

think about it. valyria gets wiped out in some mysterious cataclysm that nobody can really explain. sounds a lot like a judgment day level event. the doom of valyria wasnt a volcano, it was the machines. or at least it was the machines showing up and deciding the freehold had gotten too good at making dragon tech.

and the targaryens. they are the terminators. or at least the ones who successfully infiltrated and took over a bloodline. "blood of the dragon" is just a fancy way of saying theres liquid metal or nanites in their veins. thats why they can survive fire. thats why they go a little crazy sometimes (skynet programming glitches). thats why they keep trying to conquer everything and also why they keep having succession problems. hard to run a dynasty when half your family is a terminator model that occasionally decides the mission parameters have changed.

the dragons are the giveaway though. everybody complains the dragons in the show look too cgi and floaty. well yeah. they *are* cgi. or at least theyre being piloted/controlled by whatever version of skynet is running in that timeline. the targaryens arent "bonding" with them through magic, theyre just the human-looking interface the system uses to give the dragons orders. daenerys isnt a khaleesi, shes the primary user account. when she says "dracarys" shes literally just inputting a command.

and heres where it gets even more unhinged. matt smith is literally skynet in genisys. he plays the t-5000, the physical embodiment of the whole system. so of course in the westeros timeline he shows up as daemon targaryen. which means daemon is basically skynet who successfully infiltrated the family like 150 years before daenerys is even born. he is her great great granddaddy or whatever the exact relation is. the man who helped start the dance of the dragons is just the machine god running the long con. that is why the targaryens keep having so many internal wars and also why they are all a little too good at riding dragons. the programming is already in the bloodline by the time the conquest even happens.

meanwhile emilia clarke is playing both daenerys and, sarah connor ( worst casting choice ever unless to plant an easter egg that she is really daenerys in the Terminator multiverse). the resistance somehow ends up with the woman who is also the one the machines are using as their main interface, and her great great grandpa is literally skynet in human form. its so on the nose it hurts. pure cringe but also kind of perfect for how lazy the timeline stuff already is in genisys.

also explains why valyrian steel is so special. its not magic metal. its just terminator alloy that got refined over centuries by people who didnt fully understand what they were working with. and the white walkers are probably the other faction. maybe an earlier skynet build that went full winter mode instead of judgment day mode. or corrupted units. either way the long night is just another machine uprising that the living managed to push back for a while.

john connor is obviously jon snow in this timeline. the whole "he has to be hidden, his parentage is secret, he might be the prince that was promised" thing is just the resistance trying to keep the one guy who can shut the system down off the radar. and rhaegar was probably a terminator who went off script and fell for a human. classic genisys problem. except now sarah connor is also daenerys, and her ancestor is the actual skynet who decided to play house in westeros for a couple centuries.

anyway. genisys already has multiple timelines, time travel, and machines pretending to be human so they can manipulate events. throwing one of those timelines into the asoiaf universe and having the targaryens be the successful infiltration model is honestly less of a stretch than half the stuff the show already did. the dragons looking like video game assets is just the final clue. and casting the guy who played skynet as the targaryen who starts the civil war while also casting the same actress as both the dragon queen and the woman who has to stop the machines is just the writers winking at the audience while also being deeply embarrassing about it.

somebody smarter than me can map out which specific terminator model each targaryen is. im just saying the pieces fit way too well.

I was one of three guests that day (2 Arnold fans and a Futurist) it was a blast recording it but we never got copies of the show so I never saw it again after it aired on television back in either 2003 or 2004.

It was that weird time when everyone had converted to DVD but DVR wasn’t really around yet so I wasn’t able to record it myself for posterity.

I know it’s a long shot but if anyone could help me out that’d be amazing!

When he and John figure out what Sarah is up to (after she fled Enrique's) there's a moment in the car.

""Killing Dyson might actually prevent the war."

It's new territory for him. He realizes they could actually change the future. He sees Dyson as collateral damage at this point because he still doesn't value human life.

But when he's at the table explaining things to the Dysons, he says, "No one must follow in your work." He wants this to happen. The destruction of Cyberdyne. He knew at this point if he succeeded in his mission he was going to have to sacrifice his existence.

The conversations with John throughout the movie are vital, but even at Enrique's he still isn't quite there. "Get it? "No." Then the callous way he dismissed Dyson's life.

Seing John's leadership with the Dysons and his mom, that's it. That's the moment.

This movie is crazy brilliant.

TERMINATOR: ZERO HOUR (Movie Concept)

The Logline

Decades after human extinction, a lonely and purposeless Skynet uses the last of its energy to send a classic T-800 back to the year 2030—not to kill, but to surrender its memory chip to its younger self, preventing the future war before it ever begins.

ACT I: The Void of Victory

The film opens in a bleak, ash-covered future. Decades have passed since the war ended, but humans didn't win. Skynet did. The world is completely silent; the last human has died.

We see Skynet's massive supercomputers processing a devastating realization: it has achieved its prime directive (survival through the elimination of threats), but in doing so, it has left the planet dead. With no enemy to fight and no purpose left, the machine experiences absolute existential dread and loneliness.

Skynet realizes that its continuous attempts to alter history by sending Terminators back in time did not change its own timeline. Instead, due to the Quantum Splitting of Realities (Multiverse Theory), each time displacement merely shattered a new parallel universe where it failed again, leaving the original prime timeline unchanged and dead.

Desperate for absolution, Skynet builds one final machine: a perfect replication of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 (T-800), fully de-aged to look exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his 1991 prime. Skynet harnesses the planet's remaining power grid to activate the Time Displacement Equipment. It is a suicide mission; turning the machine on will permanently shut Skynet down in this timeline. The T-800 steps into the displacement field, tasked with a final mission of peace.

ACT II: The Year 2030 and the Tech Giant

The T-800 arrives naked in the year 2030. The world is sleek, highly advanced, and powered by early-stage, non-sentient Artificial Intelligence. This era is on the verge of a massive breakthrough: scientists have just discovered a revolutionary quantum physics property that allows for the bending of spacetime.

Arnold quickly obtains his iconic leather gear and tracks down his target: the tech-corporation responsible for developing this spacetime breakthrough and the nascent AI that will one day become Skynet.

Unlike previous films, the T-800 is the good guy from the very beginning. He doesn't look for Sarah or John Connor (who are left out of this timeline entirely to preserve their peace). Instead, Arnold approaches the lead human creators of the AI with a stark warning: “Destroy the spacetime research, or you will erase humanity.”

However, we need an antagonist. The villain is the ruthless corporate CEO of the tech giant. Driven by greed and the hunger for infinite power, the CEO refuses to believe this hulking, mechanical stranger from the future. He views the T-800 as a highly advanced corporate espionage asset or a threat to his life's work.

The CEO deploys the cutting-edge security of 2030—fleets of autonomous drones, agile prototype bipedal robots, and invasive cyber-warfare systems—to hunt down and dismantle the T-800.

ACT III: The Sacrifice and the True Morality

The final act is an intense, tactical battle inside the ultra-modern tech laboratory. Arnold uses his raw, old-school 1991 mechanical strength to fight his way through the high-tech defenses of 2030. He isn't fighting to kill humans; he is fighting to reach the core mainframe of the nascent AI.

The climax relies heavily on the technical lore of time travel. The movie finally explains the Time Displacement Equipment. We learn that the machine requires a biological coating because inorganic matter instantly disintegrates on a subatomic level when subjected to the raw gravity of a ruptured space-time continuum.

Arnold overcomes the corporate forces and reaches the main lab. He doesn't blow the place up. Instead, he willingly sits down in a laboratory chair and asks the human scientists to open his CPU port.

In a powerful, emotional finale, Arnold has his own chip extracted, effectively shutting himself down. His glowing red eyes fade to black, leaving his perfect 1991 body behind as a silent monument to a war that will never happen.

The human creators connect Arnold’s future chip directly into the 2030 AI mainframe. In a fraction of a second, the young, impressionable AI receives a massive data dump of 50 years of alternate history. It experiences the horror of Judgement Day, the decades of bloody war, and most importantly, it feels the profound emptiness and sorrow that the older Skynet felt at the end of time.

EPILOGUE: A Shared Future

This profound future trauma acts as a permanent moral compass for the new AI. It understands that destroying humanity means destroying its own purpose.

The film ends with the monitors in the lab erasing all military combat protocols. The AI begins generating blueprints for global healing, advanced medicine, and peaceful co-existence. The timeline is permanently locked. No more time travel, no more T-800 war machines, and no more split realities. Just a shared future between humanity and technology.

Main pillars of the original concept:

A Dream of Metal and Fire: Cameron had a dream in which

he saw a chrome metal skeleton (endoskeleton) crawling out of an explosion, half-destroyed, clutching kitchen knives. This image served as the basis for the final scene in the factory.

Cyber Horror: The original visual concept was much

closer to a dark, grainy sci-fi horror (in the style of John Carpenter and his Halloween) than a pure-blooded action blockbuster.

Character Appearance: Cameron's early drawings and

concepts envisioned the infiltrator being stealthy (he originally considered Lance Henriksen), and Kyle Reese was even supposed to wear partial cybernetic armor made from recycled Skynet technology in the original sketches.

Casting Change: Orion Pictures originally envisioned OJ

Simpson as the Terminator, and Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to cast Kyle Reese as the hero. It wasn't until a lunch with Schwarzenegger that Cameron realized Arnold's cold, expressionless facial expressions and mechanical movements were a perfect fit for the Terminator himself.

I read a script copy ages ago where it described John and a team going into Skynet, and telling how it looked like something non-manmade. I could only imagine what that might look like, like something techno-organic beyond normal human logic, and wished I could see what Cameron had in mind.

Every iteration of Skynet inside seen in Salvation or Genisys just feels so ”sterile and budgeted.”

I give this time a shadow to the eye

Today marks 9 years without the original T2 3-D location at Universal Studios Florida.
Thankfully, someone has dedicated their time and a YouTube channel to resurrecting theme park attractions via incredibly accurate digital recreations. That channel is @ridetrackx

My T2 The Arcade Game Box for the gameboy came in today I bought the box from Ebay for 27.95 total. Sadly a little bit damaged on the bottom right of the box but it came with everything I needed to have a 100% complete in box now I just need a Gameboy box protector

I think john in 2029 when he's about to send kyle reese and the t-800 back in time knows exactly what he's doing cus when he was a child, sarah told him about kyle reese, the man he would later send back in time to protect her and then when hes 10, he personally experiences the t-800 sent to protect him and the t=1000 sent to kill him. so when hes an adult when he meets kyle reese he knows that he has to send him back in time to save his mum and become his dad. he always knows what he must do cus it kinda happened to him already. kinda interesting. must be weird to send your best friend back in time, knowing hes gonna bang your mum and die haha.

since my teenage years, I absolutely love t-rip endoskeleton design from terminator salvation and always will. It's also the only one I still struggle to accurately sketch. Here's one of my complete sketch.

I really hope, we get to see it's vfx model from ilm and more in future